All was as dark--that is, upon the bottom--as ever.

It was only in the upper portion that there was a faint lighting-up.
Fred could see the jagged edges of the opening, with some of the bushes bent over, and seemingly ready to drop down, with the dirt and gravel clinging to their roots.

The opening was irregular, and some four or five feet in extent, and, as near as he could estimate, was some thirty feet above his head.
"If I happened to come down on a rock, I might have got hurt; but things down here were fixed to catch me, and it begins to look as though they were fixed to hold me, too." His situation was certainly very serious.

He had no gun or weapons of any kind other than a common jack-knife, and it looked very much as if there was no way for him to get out the cave again without outside assistance, of which the prospect was exceedingly remote.
He was hungry, and without the means of obtaining food.
The berries, which had acted so queerly with him the day before, were beyond his reach.
Vegetation needs the sunlight, as do all of us, and it is useless to expect anything edible below.
"Unless it's fish," thought Fred, aloud.

"I've heard that they find them in the Mammoth Cave without eyes, and there may be some of the same kind here; but then I'm just the same as a boy without eyes, and how am I going to find them ?" The more he reflected upon his situation, the more disheartened did he become.